


but shrapnel is shrapnel

by Princex_N



Series: baby that’s just how i am [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Angst, Arguing, Canon Compliant, Child Abuse, Conflict, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Misunderstandings, POV Multiple, Pre-Canon, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Siblings, Tourette's Syndrome, tics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-18 21:25:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18126671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: "You really can't control them at all, can you?""That's what I've been saying," Klaus says, staring up at the ceiling balefully, sounding more tired than angry.A glimpse of the other Hargreeves Siblings perceptions and opinions of Klaus and his Tourette's.





	but shrapnel is shrapnel

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so excited by the positive feedback this series has already gotten so far!! Thank you all so much!! This fic is here to hopefully tide y'all over while I work on the next installation, and to give you some more insight into the thought processes of the siblings!
> 
> Things don't always work out as understanding as the summary would imply

Allison is in the middle of painting her nails when she hears her door open. 

She knows without looking up that it's either Five or Klaus, because they're the only ones who never knock before coming in. A moment later, the sound of a now-familiar whistle lets her know who it is for sure. 

"What do you want, Klaus?" she asks, willing to hear him out, but not necessarily willing to look up at him to ask. She's busy, after all. Dad only lets her have so much time during the day to use the nail polish and she doesn't want to have to go through the rest of her day with only one had painted. 

It takes him a while to answer, which is strange enough to finally make her look up at him. He's lingering in the doorway, partially hidden by the door itself, and looking at her nervously, shoulders jumping strangely. 

"What's wrong?" she asks, putting the little brush back into the bottle. 

He whistles sharply, and when he ducks his head, she can't tell if he's supposed to be doing it on purpose or not. "I was just,  _nn_ , wondering if you would paint my nails too?" 

Allison narrows her eyes at him suspiciously. "Is this a joke?" 

His eyes widen in response, "No!" His head jerks. "No, I'm serious." 

So far, Allison has been the only one who'd taken a liking to this sort of thing. Vanya doesn't seem interested at all (and even if she  _was_ , she's always busy on her violin when Allison has this free-time scheduled) and none of the boys have shown any interest in it either. Not until now, at least. 

It would be fun to play with someone else. And Dad never said that she _couldn't_ share. 

"Fine," she says finally. "But you have to stay still for it." 

She doesn't understand why Klaus acts the way he does and doesn't really care enough to ask him about it, but she does know that if he doesn't sit still then getting the paint to only be on his nails is going to be a real pain. Allison isn't very good at it yet - she still winds up with a lot of polish on her skin - and it's only going to be worse if Klaus doesn't stop goofing off long enough for her to concentrate. 

He bounds over to her bed eagerly, clicking his tongue as he goes, but does seem to settle down once he's actually sitting. Allison looks him over suspiciously, and he raises his eyebrows as if to say ' _See? I can do it right'_ , so she pulls out the paint and gets started. 

She talks a little bit about what she's doing, and about the things that she'd read in one of the magazines Mom had gotten her from the store, but Klaus is almost eerily silent, listening without making any comments or jokes. She'd be concerned, but the quiet is a nice break from his usual chaos, and it's nice to talk to someone who's willing to listen about this kind of thing. 

All of one hand gets finished - and Allison is extremely pleased with what she's managed to accomplish so far, with all of the paint neatly on his nails and none of it on his skin - when things go wrong. 

She's starting to work on his second hand when she notices the strange way he's moving his head. It's a little different from the usual way (and she thinks that it's definitely weird that there's a 'usual way'; what Klaus does isn't Normal. Dad said so), like he's straining harder than usual. His hands are still steady enough that she doesn't really mind it, but he's biting his lip awfully hard, and she opens her mouth to ask if something is wrong anyway. 

She doesn't get a chance. 

Klaus's hand jerks out of her grip, and he lets out a strange yelping noise. That would have been bad enough, but then his shoulders bunch up and his head twists and he whistles, and  _then_ with a really strange sound (like the kind of noise you make when you hold in a sneeze) his arm sweeps outwards and knocks her bottle of nail polish right onto the floor. 

It breaks, because of course it was going to. That had been one of the first things Mom had told her: "Be careful not to drop it, it can break." And Allison wasn't even the one who wound up breaking it, it was  _Klaus_ , who doesn't even have the decency to stop messing around and apologize. That was her favorite color, the pink with the glitter, and Klaus had  _ruined_ it.

Tears of anger spring to her eyes, and she slams her palms against the bed in frustration. "I heard a rumor you  _got out of my room,"_ she snaps, and Klaus stands up to leave, but doesn't stop acting crazy even  _once_ on his way out. 

Allison looks at the mess on her floor, and sniffles. Dad said if she broke it then she wasn't going to be allowed to have any polish anymore, but it wasn't even her fault. 

The next time Klaus asks to share any of her stuff, Allison is going to say  _no_. 

* * *

Ben likes Klaus. Maybe not the most, but well enough. He's one of the only ones who is willing to stick around and listen to Ben talk about the books he's reading, even if he doesn't listen quietly. Five probably would listen, but Ben gets most of his book recommendations from Five, and the other boy doesn't seem to care much for talking about then once he's done reading them. 

But Klaus listens, even if he doesn't really follow along, and if he can't still still. Ben can appreciate the fact that he tries. 

The other thing that Klaus is good at, Ben isn't sure if he can appreciate as much. 

Klaus has the almost uncanny ability to just  _know_ when one of them, Ben especially, is about to get dragged off by Dad for special training. Ben understands the reason for it all, because he knows that learning to control their powers is important for the missions that Dad sends them on. But the reality is that Ben doesn't like the missions, and he doesn't want to control his powers, because he doesn't want to use them at all. 

Klaus understands that. 

So Ben understands - as much as he doesn't - why Klaus is always willing to intervene on their behalf. 

"Number Six," dad calls, and Ben flinches at the tone and stops talking right in the middle of his explanation of the book he's been reading. "It's time for you to come with me." 

Klaus looks up and meets Ben's eyes, and Ben knows what he's thinking almost immediately. He doesn't get a chance to decide if he wants to try and thank the taller boy or tell him no before the unnatural stillness that Klaus takes on whenever Dad walks into the room (and it's probably strange, isn't it, how Klaus sitting still is enough to make him look not like himself at all) is gone. 

Dad watches as Klaus starts to jerk - his shoulders coming up around his ears as his head jerks to the left sharply, little huffs of breath exhaled with every motion - where he sits. 

The attention shifts immediately. "Number Four, we have  _discussed_ this behavior before," Dad snaps. 

"Sorry -  _ai!_ \- sorry, dad," Klaus says, not sounding very sorry at all. And Ben knows that Dad can tell, because he only gets angrier. 

"Number Six," he says, and Ben startles. "It would appear that your training will have to wait until a later time. It seems as though Number Four requires special attention." The word attention is spit like a curse, and Klaus either grins or bares his teeth in response. 

Before he's dragged off, he pauses long enough to smile at Ben for real, only stopping when he stops to yelp instead. 

Ben can be grateful, he _should_ be grateful, because Klaus does it on purpose just to make sure that Ben can get a break from the horrors every once in a while. 

But sometimes he wishes that his brother would just  _stop_ , for his own sake, if no one else's. 

* * *

It's not unusual for Vanya to wish that she could play with the others. 

But right now, she's wishing that she hadn't even tried. 

She had been able to hear them during their free-time. She had known that it was on the schedule because their free-time is usually around the same time that Vanya has to practice her violin. But she had paused for the rest in the song she'd been practicing (it's supposed to be played along with the rest of an orchestra, but Vanya doesn't have one of those), and had been able to hear them as they'd walked past her door. 

She'd only wanted to peek. She'd thought that she'd be able to do it without getting caught. 

But Klaus had noticed her almost immediately. His face lighting up, as if she was someone that he was actually happy to see, and she'd though, for a moment, that maybe he'd invite her to play with them. 

Instead, his right arm got caught in a strange motion that ended with him smacking Diego right in the stomach, and Diego (who's been on a hair-trigger temper since he'd stuttered during an interview and got yelled at by Dad. She's not allowed to play with them because she can't do anything like them, but that makes her like her dad instead, she guesses, so she takes notes like him to. She doesn't actually know what she's supposed to do with them yet) gets mad enough to push Klaus back. 

From there, all six of them devolve into arguments and brief spats, and Vanya is forgotten about entirely. It's probably for the best, since Dad would have gotten angry if she'd ignored the schedule  _and_ played with the others, but if Klaus hadn't wanted her to play, he could have just said so, instead of trying to get her hopes up only to make a scene instead. 

* * *

"Five!!" A sharp whistle. "Five, I need your help." 

Five can hear Klaus whining from all the way down the hall, and for a moment, he entertains the idea of jumping to some other part of the house where it will take him longer to be found. Ultimately, he decides that he has enough time to spare to at least hear what it is that Klaus wants (not that there's a guarantee that he'll actually wind up  _helping_ once he knows what it is). 

"What?" he calls back, just loud enough to be heard. 

The noise of Klaus's unsteady gait gets louder until he's in Five's room, fighting through a strange turn of his head to look at Five pleadingly. 

"Can you do me a favor?" he asks, rocking forward on the balls of his feet in a movement that might be his attempt to look endearing, but might be entirely involuntary. 

Five narrows his eyes. "Depends on what you want," he decides. 

Klaus's face lights up, but he stops to pull his arms back sharply and yelp before he can tell Five what he needs. 

"Are you going to the - _ai!_ \- to the library soon?" 

Their father's book collection is quite extensive on its own, but it doesn't have  _everything_ that they need. The library that sits a couple of blocks away is one of the placed that he's allowed to go to on his own,  _if_ he can give his dad a good enough reason for needing to. 

It's not a Five-Exclusive opportunity, though. 

"Why can't you go on your own?" he asks. 

Klaus gives him a  _look_ _,_ one of the ones that says that he's disappointed someone else hadn't reacted the way he'd wanted them to. 

"Oh, s-sure," he says, stumbling over his words as his hands come up to push at his chin. "Let me just - _ai!_ \- just walk into the place full of," his head jerks, throat pushing out staccato noises with the strain, " _nnf, nn, ai!_ \- full of 'Quiet Please' signs and just," the heel of his foot slams against the floor," look around for a bit." His hand smacks loudly against his chest. 

Five grimaces. "Good point," he allows. "What do you need?" 

Klaus shakes his head violently. "A book about _, nnf_ , Tourette's." 

"What's that supposed to be?" 

Klaus breaks eye-contact. Turning his face to the side before he winds up jerking it back in a move that looks less than deliberate. "What Mom says is wrong with me." 

Five has never really bought into the idea that Klaus can control the movements and noises he makes. The others, their father included, all seem to think that he does it to be funny or annoying, but Five doesn't think that Klaus is dedicated enough to any joke to suffer through the annoyance it seems to cause himself. Five doesn't miss the irritated looks Klaus makes at himself when the interruptions get really bad. He makes jokes sometimes, sure, but he seems just as annoyed as everyone else sometimes too. 

He seems to wilt the longer Five goes without answering, so Five hurries to do so.

"Sure," he says. "How do you spell it?" 

He'd been planning on making a trip to the library anyway, to pick up some books on the theory of time travel. He might as well pick up something for Klaus while he's there.

* * *

Diego can't stand his stutter. 

There are a lot of things that make Diego angry, and the stutter is one of the worst, even now. Not only is it incredibly frustrating to not be able to get his thoughts out as smoothly as his siblings can, but he can also tell that every single syllable he stutters over is one more strike against him in his father's book.

More and more lately, Diego has been getting the sense that trying to get his father to approve of him is an impossible task. He thinks that maybe some part of him has always known, but it's so easy to forget when Luther is there, always seemingly closer to that impossibility than Diego could ever hope to be. 

Maybe that's why Klaus is so frustrating. 

Unlike Diego, Klaus doesn't have any interest or hope in trying to get their Dad's approval. Diego doesn't think that Klaus has ever cared, really, and part of him is so incredibly jealous of that. Because at least Klaus can still have fun without constantly feeling the shadow of the old man blocking everything else out. 

He's even totally okay with his own weird stutters. 

Mom calls them "Tics", but Diego has never really cared to learn all that much about them. Sometimes he wonders if the frustration he feels is the same for Klaus, sometimes wonders if maybe it's even worse. Because as long as Diego doesn't talk, it's almost like he can pretend that he's totally normal. But it always looks like Klaus is  _constantly_ trying to fight through his tics, whether he's trying to sit still or run after them during missions, whether he's trying to tell a story or stay totally quiet; Klaus always winds up ticcing. 

Diego thinks that maybe, in another life, they could have been better friends because of it. Two people whose bodies insist on tripping and stuttering even when they don't want to. 

But this isn't that life, and instead, Diego always feels caught between a vague sort of jealousy and a sick sort of anger. 

Because Klaus doesn't seem like he cares about the tics either, not the same way Diego cares about his stutter. He even gets annoyed when other people tell him to stop it, even though Diego has  _seen_ him stop for as long as he'd wanted to before. 

He's always totally still and quiet during the interviews with the media and during dinners with Dad, and sometimes during missions. But as soon as everything is over, he goes right back to the noise and the weird movements and doesn't seem to care about making them stop at all. 

Diego can't understand that one bit. 

Other times, watching Klaus just makes Diego  _angry_. Diego had been born like this, something in him that  _came_ broken, and he's had to fight ever since to try and fix it. But Klaus was totally normal for  _years_ , until all of a sudden, he decided that he didn't want to be anymore. It was like he just got bored one day and started all of it just to be funny. But the joke has gone on for too long now, and no one else thinks it's funny anymore. 

But Klaus just keeps on ticcing, like he doesn't care what anyone else thinks, like it's no big deal, like he still somehow thinks it's funny. 

Diego can't decide if that makes him angry or jealous, and he's not sure he'll ever figure it out.

* * *

Luther has never really understood Klaus's weird movements and noises and has never really cared. He never thinks that they're as funny as the others seem to find them sometimes, but does think that they can get annoying pretty quickly (although,  _everything_ about Klaus can get annoying pretty quickly). He knows that Dad definitely doesn't like it, but Luther ultimately thinks that it's not necessarily a big deal, as long as Klaus knows that there's a time and a place. 

But now, Luther knows  _exactly_ why Dad is always so annoyed by it. 

Klaus was  _supposed_ to be the look-out. He was supposed to be making sure that no one was going to interfere while the rest of them had gone ahead to try and find a way into the building without getting seen, but  _instead_ Klaus had been the one to lead all of the bad guys  _straight to them_ , and he's the reason that Allison had gotten shot before they'd gotten a chance to react. 

Even now, he doesn't have the decency to drop the stupid charade. 

Dad has already yelled at him, but Luther isn't anywhere near ready to drop it. 

"You're such an idiot," he snarls, pushing Klaus up against the wall, and only gets angrier when the smaller boy just makes one of his stupid noises in response. "You could have gotten her,  _all of us_ , killed because _you_ couldn't stop goofing off for  _five minutes_." 

Klaus jerks under his hand, but it's not enough to break Luther's grip on the front of his shirt. " _Hey_ , fff-," the word trails off as he jerks his head, making a weird little groaning noise in his throat. "Fuck _\- ai!_ \- fuck you. I don't," he whistles, "I don't," the same head jerk and groan. "I don't do it on, on," he swears as his arms reach around Luther's to push at his own chin. 

Luther laughs, even though he doesn't think there's much to laugh about. "You really can't do  _anything_ right, huh?" he growls, his anger at Klaus's continued annoying behavior just feeding into his previous anger from the failed mission. "You can't even finish a  _sentence_." 

Klaus tries to curse at him again, but it's lost under the dumb noises he keeps making. When Luther finally lets him go, he doesn't even knock it off long enough to walk away, still stuck against the wall like an idiot. 

Luther leaves instead. He doesn't want to be around Klaus any longer than he has to. 

* * *

He's been dead for almost two weeks now, and Ben is still trying to adjust. 

He'd never spent a lot of time thinking about dying, or about what would happen to him after he'd died. He's always known that ghosts exist, because Klaus talked about them sometimes, even if he hadn't always been  _happy_ about them, but Ben had never really thought about being a ghost himself someday. 

Now that he is one, he wonders if he could have prepared for it better if he had thought about it more before it was too late. 

Ben has been dead for two weeks now, but he hasn't been spending a lot of time in the house. He can go basically wherever he wants to now, but some part of him always wants to stay close to Klaus anyway. He forces that part of him to shut up, because he hasn't learned how to reliably hide all of the gore that he's covered in yet, and he knows - even thought Klaus never says it - that Klaus can't stand to see it.

So, he can't stick around until he can control it. 

He visits, though, mostly when Klaus is high or asleep. One is a lot more common than the other, and Ben is starting to realize why. 

Klaus doesn't sleep any calmer than he does anything else. Ben has always thought of the tics as something _part_ of Klaus, but also as something that he could control. Like how someone's voice is unique to them, but something they can still choose when to use.

But now that Ben is dead, he's around a lot more, and Ben has to stop and wonder how Klaus gets any rest at all. 

Because Klaus is asleep, but his head is still spasming against his pillow, his muscles pulling in their usual sharp motions, hands twitching and smacking against any surface that happens to be in their way - whether it's the wall, or the bed, or the rest of Klaus himself. He sleeps through some of it, but Ben is never surprised when Klaus winds up ticcing himself away more than once throughout the night. 

"Is it always like this?" he asks, and immediately feels guilty when Klaus startles so badly he nearly falls out of his bed entirely. 

"Is what alw-  _ai!_ \- always like what?" he asks muzzily, squinting over at Ben in the darkness. 

"The tics," Ben says. "When you're asleep." 

Klaus makes a face, whistles, and glares. "Yeah, I mean, most nights," he says, settling back against the pillow, only to wind up pushed back up on his elbows for a painful few seconds - back arched uncomfortably. "I think they stop eventually, but they usually wake me up anyway." 

Ben is quiet for a moment. "You really can't control them at all, can you?" 

"That's what I've been saying," Klaus says, staring up at the ceiling balefully, sounding more tired than angry. 

Ben doesn't know if understanding that  _before_ would have changed anything. He kind of doubts it. He doesn't think that Klaus would have stopped using it to get them out of trouble, or that it would have changed enough to keep Ben from dying, or fixed any of the other problems that have been plaguing their family for years. 

But if Ben had thought about it, if he had figured it out earlier, then he might have been able to help Klaus the same way that Klaus had helped him, before it was too late. 

Regardless of what anyone else might say, that would have counted for something. 

* * *

After Ben dies, Klaus is the first one to leave. 

He doesn't leave a note, and doesn't say goodbye, and doesn't give any indication that something is wrong at all until they'd all gotten up for breakfast the next morning, and Klaus had never showed. Dad got angry, but only because Klaus broke the schedule. Once they go through his room and find his clothes and backpack gone, Dad doesn't care anymore; just seems angry to have lost another soldier. 

It makes Diego jealous. He wishes that he'd had the thought to leave, first. 

(It makes Diego mad. Klaus should have said something, he should have said goodbye. Diego wouldn't have left without telling anyone. He wouldn't have left without offering to bring Klaus along.) 

Diego leaves a couple of weeks later, but he can't stop himself from confronting his dad one last time before he leaves. 

(The old man doesn't even look up from his fucking notes. Diego is pissed. He's also jealous - still wishing after the utter disregard Klaus had for their dad's opinions and wishes that he'd been strong enough to leave without a word too.) 

He doesn't see Klaus for a while, and isn't surprised, because he has no idea where Klaus had gone, but does know that he'd always talked big about traveling. On his better days, Diego hopes he's having fun out there, wherever he is. 

(On his worst days, Diego knows better.) 

The real stumbling blocks start to come after he's left. When he starts to apply for jobs and realizes just how badly the old man had fucked all of them over, to try and make sure that none of them had a choice but to stay with the academy. 

Diego had always known that their childhood wasn't anything like other kids', but he hadn't even considered things like a traditional high school education when he'd thought about things like that. It doesn't matter that Diego is intelligent, and skilled, and a years practiced pro at pushing his stutter down - no one wants to hire him, and it's starting to look like his only option will be to go crawling back to the house with his tail between his fucking legs. 

In hindsight, forging the documents to get into the police academy wasn't his brightest idea, but it's not like he'd felt there were many other options. 

But in that neat space between doing it and getting caught, when it looks like things could  _almost_ work out,  _that's_ when Diego sees Klaus again. 

He doesn't actually  _see_ him at first, but he's walking back to his apartment from a convenience store (he's passed the actual test to get his driver's license, but hasn't been able to scrounge up enough money to get his first car, yet) and can't help the way his head jerks up to attention at the sound of a very familiar two-note whistle. 

At first, he thinks it's nothing but coincidence (because why would Klaus stick around  _here_ , when he'd had the whole world out there that he had been interested in chasing?), but he can't stop himself from following the sound. Tracing it all the way to a form hunched over next to a dumpster in an alleyway, a form that yelps and jerks its head in a very familiar fashion. 

"Klaus?" he asks, and the figure startles (or tics) hard enough to hit the side of head against the metal dumpster with a resounding Clang. 

"J-Jesus - _ai!_ \- fuck," he says, leaning forward. "Diego??" 

The figure stands, fighting through an uncomfortable looking twist of his shoulders, and as he gets closer, Diego can see that it  _is_ Klaus, still as tall and lanky as ever (but is he thinner than Diego remembers him being?), decked out in skin tight jeans and a t-shirt that shows way too much of his stomach. Diego can't tell if it's makeup or just exhaustion causing the heavy shadows under his eyes, and as he steps forward, Diego can see that he's  _definitely_ not wearing shoes. 

"Holy shit, it is you!" Klaus says. Pauses to whistle, head jerking to the side twice in quick succession. "What are you doing all the way out,  _nnf_ , out here?" 

Diego blinks, still caught up in the surprise of the state he's found his brother in, in the surprise of finding him still in this State at all. "I left," he says finally. "Few weeks after you did. I have an apartment down here, now." 

Klaus looks elated. "Good for," his shoulders bunch up and his head jerks backwards, grunts low in his throat. "Good for you! Sticking it to the old man, finally! And an apartment," he whistles, but Diego thinks  _maybe_ it was supposed to be intentional. "Highly impressive." 

“What about you?” Diego asks, not sure if it’s a challenge or a genuine question. He can’t tell if he’s concerned or not.

Klaus blinks, seeming surprised, but he brushes it off quickly in favor of pasting on a huge grin. “Oh, you know – _ai!_ – you know me! Been here and there, meeting lots of new,” he clicks his tongue twice, “people! Lots of fun.”

Nothing about the place Diego has found him seems particularly fun, but Klaus has always been a liar.

“Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?” It’s not quite _cold_ , but it’s getting there, and it’s at a point where it wouldn’t be comfortable to be caught out in the middle of the night in the kind of clothes that Klaus is currently wearing.

There is a pause, a moment where Klaus doesn’t even tic, and then he’s a new flurry of movement and noise. Assuring Diego that of course he has a place to stay, through the chaos of tics and spasms that wrack his too-skinny frame.

Diego doesn’t get a chance to call bullshit before he’s gone, faded into the night with an ease a man that loud shouldn’t have.

Diego doesn’t follow.

(Maybe he’s just tired. Maybe he knows that he’ll run into Klaus again later. Maybe it’s just spite, plain and simple. If the man hadn’t seen fit to work as hard as Diego had to get himself under control long enough to get a decent job, then it’s his own fault if something happens, right?)

(Right?) 

* * *

Luther is the last one left. The only one that’s still around to go on missions, anymore.

Sometimes he wishes he wasn’t. Wishes that things hadn’t changed, and that there were other people around to act as supposed, because it’s helpful. That was the reason Dad had put the team together in the first place

But other times, he’s something closer to grateful. Even though some things are more complicated to pull off when he’s alone, other things are much easier. There’s less time he has to spend trying to coordinate and make sure everyone’s doing what they’re supposed to be doing. He doesn’t have to worry about anyone else except for himself when things start to get rough. He doesn’t have to worry about anyone running off on their own, or making their own calls in the head of the moment, or doing something stupid for attention.

Klaus had been the first one to leave, and Luther had almost been grateful. He had Klaus had never been particularly close in the first place, and Luther only really hung out with him when the others were around. Klaus wasn’t good competition, and he wasn’t good during training, either. He’d never been very helpful on missions, and ever since Ben died, he’d only been worse. (Luther gets it, of course he does, Ben was his brother too, but there’s no time, that’s no excuse. Dad has expectations, and it’s their job to rise to meet them).

The strongest thing Luther had felt about Klaus was annoyance. Annoyed that Klaus didn’t try harder, that he always insisted on goofing off, that he never seemed to learn no matter how many times things went wrong.

Luther is almost glad he’s gone.

(But sometimes, when the house is at its quietest, when there are long breaks between missions, and Luther hasn't spoken to another person in days, he wishes that someone, anyone, even Klaus, was still around. Even if only for a little while.)

* * *

Vanya wakes up to the red numbers on her clock beaming 3AM directly into her eyes and the sound of someone knocking incessantly at her door.

She doesn’t usually get visitors during the normal hours of the day, and definitely doesn’t get them at odd hours in the morning. It might be one of her neighbors that need something, and it might be someone who has the wrong address, or it could be any number of people in any number of situations. Vanya doesn’t really want to have to deal with any of them, but it doesn’t seem like they’re going to get that hint and leave any time soon.

So, she forces herself out of bed, pulls on one of the hoodies on her floor, and makes her way to the door.

“Can I help you?” she asks, blinking dazedly through the bright light of the hallway.

And it’s Klaus, listing unsteadily against the door-frame, head caught in an uncomfortable rut against the wood.

“Hello, sister dearest,” he says, then whistles sharply into the quiet of the building. His hand lifts to twist his chin, and she catches sight of a medical bracelet still wound around his wrist. He grins, and the side of his face pulls as his head jerks to the side. “It’s been a while!”

For a moment, she’s too caught up in the shock of seeing him to actually do anything, but when he yelps loudly, she hurries to invite him in, if only to avoid getting in trouble with her neighbors.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, and doesn’t mean for it to come out as accusing as it probably does.

He seems offended, but it’s impact is lost at the way the corners of his mouth lift to betray his amusement. “Do I need a reason to see my favorite sister?”

“I’m not your favorite,” she deflects, more automatic than anything else.

He could have run with it, or dismissed it, or done any number of things that one of the others would have done. BUt this is Klaus, and not any of the others, and he just smiles at her almost sadly and says, “You’re the one who stuck around,” before the moment is interrupted by the sharp twist of his head and whistling.

Vanya could let herself accept it, just lets things lie where they are and let them be as easy as Klaus is willing to let them be.

But she can’t.

“I wrote the book,” she points out, and there’s no satisfaction in the way Klaus’s smile falters.

“Maybe,” he says, yelps, forces the grin back in place. “Quite the power move. Excellent way to stick it to the old man. And the rest of us, I guess.” She knows that she’s the one who brought it up, but she winces anyway. “But hey, not much that wasn’t true!! And anyway, it’s not really all your fault. People liked to debate about me even before they read your insights.”

 _That_ forces something cold to wrap around Vanya’s lungs. She’d known, of course, about the conversations that her book had sparked, had read another article about Allison just this morning that had cited her book more than once. But she hadn’t thought about _any_ of it when she’d been writing, or when she’d sent the manuscript off to the publisher, but it had seemed so painfully obvious in hindsight.

She should have known better. She should have been smarter. It was no wonder her father had always been so disappointed in her, she was just as short-sighted and impulsive and attention seeking as she’d accused Klaus of being.

She should have known better.

* * *

The hardest parts of the counseling are the realizations.

Allison had known that she had messed up. From the moment she’d seen the look on Patrick’s face when he’d heard what she’d said, she had known. In reality, she’d probably known the whole time, and just hadn’t wanted to admit it.

No, the hardest part isn’t realizing that _she’d_ been wrong. It’d been realizing just how much her own childhood still affected her.

Moving out of the house, getting her new career on track, it was supposed to be a new start. A shedding of everything that her father had put her though and the creation of a new self to put in its stead. It was supposed to be new, and clean, and _good_. She thought that she had let it all go, that she had understood how normal people worked, and how to be one of them.

The counseling shows her that she’s never had a single clue.

Some of it, she had known was obvious. Lessons gleaned from movies and newspapers, Allison knew that hitting your kids too much or too hard was bad and that neglecting to feed or clothes them was too.

But there was so much more than she hadn’t learned. So much that everyone else just _knew_ that she hadn’t.

She learns that parents are supposed to talk to their kids, and they’re supposed to actually listen to what they have to say, even if it’s not really important or relevant. She learns that withholding food as a punishment is wrong, in all circumstances, and that threatening to hurt them is wrong (Even if you don’t follow through). So many things that had just seemed _normal_ are turning out to be so much more complicated than she’d ever thought.

Dad holding Diego’s head under water during training to see how long he’d hold his breath for, Dad forcing Five to jump again and again until he’d thrown up from the strain, Dad making Luther lift more and more until his bones broke under the strain of his own muscles, Dad making Allison Rumor people on the street until her voice had cracked and her throat had bled, Dad forcing Ben to tear open his skin to let the horrors out over and over, Dad making Vanya play her violin under her fingers bled, Dad yelling or making Klaus leave without eating if he couldn’t sit still enough at the table.

Klaus wasn’t the only one who ever got punished – all of them did – and Allison had never _liked_ it, but most of it had been fair, hadn’t it? When Allison had angrily argued that _Klaus_ was the one who’d knocked over the nail polish, and dad had taken him to the basement for hours only to bring him back up covered in weird little cuts and marks. Action, consequence. Or when Allison and Luther got caught out of their beds after curfew and then got locked in their rooms for the next three days. Action, consequence. Five arguing back about one thing or another and losing all of his books and his library privileges. Diego getting into a fight with Luther and having to spend extra time in special training. Ben crying during a mission and distracting everyone and then not getting meals. Vanya being careless with a violin string and having to spend hours stringing it again over and over until she had learned.

Action, consequence.

Maybe some part of her had known that it wasn’t right, but he was her _dad_ . He was the adult. Shouldn’t he know? It had all seemed so _normal_.

Of _course_ Dad would push them to improve their powers, it was like his job, and if he hadn’t then it meant that they might get hurt even worse on a mission. Of _course_ he would try to make Vanya improve the same way – even if she didn’t have powers, it was the same in theory, right? And _of course_ Dad would get mad if Klaus was goofing off when he wasn’t supposed to be; they’d all seen that he _could_ sit still and quiet, it was just that he never _wanted_ to.

It made sense.

But watching the way her counselor reacts when she says these things or listening to her stern tone explain why Allison’s answers to her questions are wrong (like it’s all obvious, like there’s something wrong with Allison, for not being able to get the answers right), almost none of it does.

She suffers through it all, because even though being corrected makes something awful curl up around her lungs, she wants to believe that she loves her daughter enough to power through it. To finally learn how to get things right.

But some part of her wishes that she had known, before. That she had been able to realize, when there was still time to save _all_ of them, that those things weren’t normal.

But the knowing can’t save them.

Not anymore. 

* * *

It’s been almost fifty years, but Klaus doesn’t seem to have changed at all.

It’s almost something akin to a relief, to know that not _everything_ had changed while he was gone. The others have changed, changed a lot since they were thirteen, and the discrepancies are almost worse when paired with the faces of the people that Five had to identify and bury only days into his time in the apocalypse.

But, despite everything, Klaus is the same. From the way he’d stolen Allison’s clothes to the way he jerked, yelped, and shuffled his way around.

Five wasn’t being sarcastic when he’d said that it was good to see that nothing had changed.

Part of him wants to find Klaus and take the time to actually talk to him. To continue the conversation they hadn’t managed to finish before Five had run off and gotten himself stuck in the future. Wants to mention the books he’d found in the wreckage of the library, the few intact ones from the psychology section that he’d combed over with his seemingly endless time, and even Vanya’s own book that he’d read over and over.

Five had only needed to read one paragraph from a chapter about Tourette’s Syndrome to know that it was obvious that it was what Klaus had. He’d known that his father had been smart enough to come to the exact same conclusion, but hadn’t, because it wasn’t convenient enough. And he could tell from Vanya’s book that none of the others had ever put the pieces together the right way, either.

It’s not necessarily their fault. They’re not children anymore, but they’re still young (compared to him, at least). Plenty of time to fuck up in new ways and learn from old mistakes.

But Five doesn’t have time to have those kinds of conversations right now; there are more pressing matters to address first. The apocalypse is going to come if Five doesn’t figure out a way to stop it, and so he has to make sure that’s taken care of first.

After Five _has_ stopped the end of the world from coming, and after he _has_ saved his family from their untimely deaths, _then_ he’ll have all the time in the world to talk to Klaus, and show the others how they’d been wrong over the years, and have all the other conversation they’ve been putting off for the past handful of decades.

But right now, Five doesn’t even have the time to have conversations with the members of his family that _could_ keep up with him, much less the one who takes two minutes to say a sentence the rest of them could say in twenty seconds.

It will have to wait until later. 

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


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